A Brief Definition of Roads in Ukraine

The most amusing road signs in Ukraine are the ones suggesting an uneven road for x number of kilometres. We have them in the UK of course, although they are generally ignored. This is because an uneven road in the UK is usually just a series of gentle undulations that might send you off to slumber only to wake up embedded in a tree. In Ukraine, the best way to describe an uneven road is "road". You see the only smooth roads here are in places that the president has visited since the previous winter. You can practically follow his route through the town because suddenly the bowling green smoothness will disappear up a side street and the main road will deteriorate back to "road" 

For those of you not familiar with Ukraine, let me describe "road" for you a little more explicitly. Perhaps the best way to start is to imagine a normal, newly made road. Now imagine a battalion of epileptics with jack hammers have held a conference on it, followed by a gaggle of paranoid schizophrenics with aversion to white paint, who have systematically rubbed the road markings off with their elbows. Now we are getting close. To finish your visualisation of a Ukrainian road, pop it in the deep freeze at minus 20c for four months, defrost and freeze again several times. You may now be getting close to seeing it now. However this is nothing compared to driving on them, recently on a trip out of Odessa we took a minor back road as a shortcut. Now bear in mind I have a fairly decent 4 wheel drive car that has chunky all weather tyres and good ground clearance, five miles took us thirty minutes. The road was so scarred, that in places the only way to continue was to drive into the potholes and back out the other side, stopping for a cup of tea midway. 

Ukrainians have found a kind of communal solution to this problem. They don't drive on the roads anymore, the drive to the side of the roads. Here you will see entire new dirt tracks have appeared where drivers have hit one crater too many and decide, enough is enough and gone off roading.   Gradually, more and more people take to the dirt, virtually cutting a new road alongside. Indeed the road that we got stuck on had an entire dirt track for five miles running on the other side of a treeline. On our return we decided to use it, following a bus up it. Actually it took us about ten seconds to realise following the bus directly was not too good an idea. This is because five meters onto the dirt and the rapidly accelerating Mercedes mini bus had disappeared into a maelstrom of dust, stones and road kill. Our decision to back off was aided by the emergence of a double articulated truck from the sand storm, the front of the truck doing around 50 miles per hour, with the rear trailer going faster and sideways directly towards us. In a remarkable feat of driving skill Anton Sennaski managed to right the entire truck without slowing down. As we reversed out of the hedge and continued on our way, the Mercedes WRC minibus was now just a rising cloud of dust on the horizon and the entire dirt track was our own. I have to say it was fun to drive, the X-Trail a sure footed companion that dispatched the five or so miles in ten minutes or so. The same could not be said for the driver of a Bulgarian 40 ton articulated lorry who had had the misfortune to be using the official road beside us. I suspect he may still be there as I write.

The irony of this story is, that if you ask people, many roads have been allocated as repaired. The problem is, that the contractors are paid to relay a road, yet in the best case scenario they merely pad a bit of loosely packed asphalt into the existing potholes and in the worse case they don't bother at all preferring to pay a percentage of the fees to the guy that inspects the roads instead.

It's a shame, because where the roads are in good condition, they are wonderful to drive on, wide enough to overtake, with   enough bends to keep you alert and  little traffic. Unlike the UK which has a town every three miles, in south western Ukraine you can drive thirty miles without passing a village. There are no speed cameras hidden in the sunflower fields, no traffic calming measures, no variable speed limits and fixed speed traffic cameras, in fact none of the soul destroying, over regulated and pure evil, hidden tax measures that the UK's roads are increasingly laden with. In fact to clumsily paraphrase a former Soviet leader. "remove the potholes, remove the problem"

The Slow Bus to Moldova – Stuck in No Man’s Land

The bus ground to a squeaking, jolting halt just outside the Ukrainian border. The engine was switched off, as was the faux aircon removing any semblance of air circulation. It was 11am, hot, humid and getting hotter. We waited… and waited… Eventually after about 45 minutes, a Ukrainian immigration official stepped onto the bus. A palatable sense of anticipation began to melt into the heady atmosphere of BO and humidity. He then stepped off again.

It was another 15 minutes before there was any further activity. Then without warning, the engine switched on, there was a light puff of air suggesting the blower was back on too and we lurched forward through the first barrier, into a big open shed. Then stopped again. Engine off.. well you know the drill. Again we sat. Tania was fidgety; worried about making sure immigration put an exit stamp in my passport.

“I will check when they come on” she said.

Then he did come on. A young man so authoritative that Tania’s voice completely dried up, in itself an event so rare, it should be broadcast live. He took her passport then mine, checking the picture with my face, he had the look that only an immigration officer can achieve. The one that says, I have control over your destiny and if you piss me off it’s 10 years in the salt mine for you. Passports collected, he departed. Tania found her voice again.

“I hope he gives you an exit stamp!”

He did, it was another hour before I knew this, because this was how long it takes Ukrainian immigration to stamp 40 passports. One every 90 seconds or so. By now, it was midday, hot as hell and people were getting agitated. Because we were in a secure border zone, no one was allowed off the bus.

The official returned, gave all the passports to the driver who then proceeded to give them out, one by one, checking and calling each name. With a certain amount of inevitability, he started with the people at the back, who then had to fight past all the other passengers, standing in the aisles gasping for extra air or trying to coax blood back into their numbed buttocks. Eventually Tania took control, grabbed the passports from his hand and started her own distribution service.

The driver fired up the mighty German engine, vaguely engaged some cogs together with an alarming crunch and off we set. We must have travelled at least another 2 minutes before the bus ground to a halt again and our oxygen supply was cut off once more. We had arrived at the Moldavian border. It was a much more modern border post than the Ukrainian side and within minutes an impeccably dressed young immigration officer stepped on the bus and explained that he would collect passports for stamping. This was all too much for a Russian babushka sat behind me, she virtually erupted in a tirade of anger aimed directly at the Moldovan. Now, I don’t speak Russian but Tania translated his very calm and considered reply for me.

“Lady, if you do not calm down, I will turn this bus around and send you all back to the Ukrainian border. You will wait there until you are calm enough to return”

The babushka’s lips had just begun to formulate a reply when with all the synchronicity of a well rehearsed orchestra, 20 other passengers yelled “Shut up woman” She did, the immigration officer collected the passports and a brief 20 minutes later we were off, rolling into Moldova on the smoothest road I have yet experienced in the former Soviet Union.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Slow Bus to Moldova – Getting to the Border

I have had very good experiences on Ukrainian buses. Granted I have only used one company on one route but I have travelled that route several times. The company in question is Autolux and they run a luxury service from Kiev to Odessa, in sleek modern buses with only 25 seats, all business class standard. Its fair to say they are excellent.

It was with this in mind that I was looking forward to our trip to Moldova. Wait, I hear you scream, why Moldova? Well, its simple really, the Ukrainian immigration service bears not even a passing resemblance to Ukrainian immigration law, and so all the information we had received in Tania’s home town of Izmail, was completely wrong in here in Odessa. Therefore, I needed to depart the country, or apply for political asylum, which to be honest, despite the lawlessness of the British streets, I was unlikely to get.

So on yet another beautiful sunny Odessan morning, we found ourselves at the bus station looking for the 8.20 to Chisinau. This was not difficult, it was by far the oldest, most decrepit vehicle in the station. My sharp observational skills deducted that it was formerly a German bus, based mainly on the fact that it still wore its original livery. I suspect that this particular style of livery had been long outdated at the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is appropriate because it felt like the seats had been made from bits of the wall. The advertised air conditioning was in fact a blower system so feeble that it would struggle to ripple a feather and the windscreen was not so much glass as a varied collection of dead bugs.

So with uncannily German time keeping, at exactly 8.20 we left the bus station and headed onto the Odessa – Kiev motorway. This man made marvel of three lane perfection lasted all of ten minutes before we turned off, onto the road to Moldova. Here the true state of the Ukrainian roads soon became apparent. Single carriageway, rutted, potted, and quite frankly fuck-ed. Rural Ukraine passed us by at an agonizingly slow pace, made more agonizing by the buses shock absorbers or shall I just call them shocks because they certainly did little absorbing. At one stage we passed a convoy of Ukrainian military vehicles, which ironically made me feel better. This was due mainly to the fact that the bus was actually a lot younger than the army trucks and also because we had not broken down. In fact of the convoy of around 15 trucks, 4 of them were on the roadside with the bonnets up. The invasion of Moldova on hold until someone could find the right sized Soviet spanner.

The sunny morning had predictably turned into a humid august day, the vent above my head was a little strange in that instead of a big hole blowing air, there was a big hole with loads of cardboard stuffed in it. Curiosity did not get the better of me, and while Tania wasn’t looking I directed her nozzle at my head. It made no difference at all. At this stage and with a certain amount of inevitability, the rather large Babuska in front of me decided to recline her seat. Now I am tall, and if I were female and blonde, I would be called leggy and these legs were now wedged dangerously close to one of my chins. Her husband tried to do the same in front of Tania but with all the authority of a sergeant major who had just found his wife in bed with the general, she shouted “Niet” The man in front froze for a second, before his seat slowly almost imperceptibly moved back upright. I swung my legs in front of Tania’s and a modicum of comfort was restored, at least for a while. After around 90 minutes, the bus started to slow down from its already sedate pace. We were approaching the border.

TO BE CONTINUED